Deeplinks Blog posts about Digital Video

The FCC has sent a trio of letters to Apple, AT&T, and Google seeking information about Apple's recent decision to block Google Voice apps from Apple's iPhone App Store. We're pleased that Chairman Genachowski's FCC is taking wireless competition seriously, and hope that it also looks into similar discriminatory treatment that has affected iPhone apps from others, such as Skype, Mozilla, and Sling Media.

As Blu-ray.com reports, the AACS licensing authority has released the "Final Adopter Agreement" it plans to enforce against consumer electronics companies that make BluRay players (and any other AACS devices that come along). Buried inside that 188 page document is a plan to eliminate analog video... forever. BluRay device makers will have to restrict analog outputs to low resolution first:

The MPAA says that ripping from a DVD is always illegal under the DMCA, even if it's done for the purpose of fair use. Since the Copyright Office is empowered to grant three-year exemptions to the DMCA, EFF has proposed a DMCA exemption for noncommercial remix creators.

Over the holidays, video hosting site Veoh won another victory under the DMCA safe harbors, this time against Universal Music Group (UMG). The ruling should put to rest the argument that transcoding and other activities necessary for making content accessible on the web are not covered by the DMCA's Section 512(c) safe harbor for storing material on behalf of users (i.e., hosting user-generated content). This is good news not just for Veoh, but also for YouTube and every other site that hosts material uploaded by users.

Yesterday, EFF filed petitions (1, 2) with the Copyright Office seeking DMCA exemptions for three categories of activities that do not violate copyright laws, but that are still jeopardized by the DMCA's ban on bypassing technical protection measures used to control access to copyrighted works (i.e, DRM). The three exemptions are for: